Madeline gave her attention to my words and let out a bright laugh. “Oh, Althea. You are too much,” she said. She held the phone toward Diego.
He smiled and shook his head in amusement. “Your mother invented a nuclear process to synthesize helium,” he said. “We’re rich as thieves.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” she said, smiling. “But I do tend to get what I want. You’re rich yourself, too. We gave you eighteen million on your last birthday.”
Wait. Eighteen million dollars? I grew up in the boxcars of Doli, Arizona, which had the poorest zip code in the United States. I’d never had any money except what I’d earned babysitting and running errands for the McLellens. Eighteen million was enough to buy every home in Doli, or feed a smallish country of hungry children. Eighteen million was madness.
I stared, puzzled that Althea’s parents could look like normal people when they were so rich. Madeline didn’t wear any expensive jewelry. Her outfits were so understated that I’d barely noticed the muted greens and blues. Diego wore white or blue button-down shirts and conservative jackets. Yet here we were, in an elite, experimental clinic in Iceland, where they’d just bought a miracle for their daughter.
Me, they’d bought. Sure they’d aimed to resurrect Althea, but if I looked past all the research and medical advances and techniques that had gone into Dr. Fallon’s surgery, it all boiled down to one basic thing: they’d bought my mind for their daughter.
That was not okay with me.
6
THEA
NOT CURIOSITY
I COULD BARELY WAIT until night when I could use the phone Madeline left me. Finally the nurse wished me good night and dimmed my lights. As her footsteps receded, I pulled out the phone and lowered the brightness of the screen. Finally, I could find out what was going on in my real life. I hated to think Berg might have the old me still imprisoned in a vault, sedated and helpless. The chances of getting back into my old body were small, of course, but she might need me.
My first instinct was to call home. No matter how mad I was at Ma, it made sense to start with her and find out what she knew about me. I was going to need her help to get home, too, and restart my life in this new body. I had no real voice yet, though, so a call wouldn’t work, and when I tried to log on to my Forge email account, some security wall blocked me and said it didn’t recognize my device.
Great. Next I found that my profiles on social media had been deactivated. No doubt I had Berg to thank for that. Reaching out to anybody was going to require me to open a new email account, but I was too impatient for news.
I ran a search of my name again, and this time, I had a chance to peruse the headlines.
Forge Disappearance: Rosie’s Guardian Says Girl Is Perfectly Safe, Healing
“Missing” Forge Student Spotted Vacationing in Maui
Where’s Rosie? Noncustodial Parents Search for Missing Forge Girl
The Rosie Hoax: The Scheme That Maxed the Ratings
10 Top-Rated Psychiatric Facilities for Teen Celebs
Did Linus Kill Rosie?
Troubled, Creative Teens Crave Attention: A Profile of Rosie Sinclair
Raking It In: “Missing” Forge Girl More Valuable Unseen than Seen
The speculation was rabid. Fascinated, I cobbled together the public story of what had happened to me. The last official footage of me on The Forge Show pegged me resting in my sleep shell like all the other girls at six o’clock on the evening of October 29, 2066. By the next day, I was off the show, and Dean Berg announced that I had violated the rules of my freshly signed contract by getting out of my sleep shell during the night. As my new legal guardian, he removed me from the school and admitted me to a private psychiatric hospital for observation and treatment. Case closed.
Except not.
I was gratified to see that tons of people did not believe the dean. The ratings for The Forge Show went wild, and reporters flocked to the school. My parents objected violently to my removal. They demanded to know where I was and insisted that Dean Berg release me to them. He declined politely, firmly, and publicly. Within hours, my parents were repped by a pro bono lawyer who filed a lawsuit against Berg and the school. The police interviewed Dean Berg and investigated the grounds. When they confirmed that no crime had been committed, it galled me to think that Berg had gotten away both with stealing me and with his dream mining.
Fans of The Forge Show deluged social media with questions and speculation about where I’d gone. A site collected info on sightings and contributions to fund the search for me. Irate donors petitioned for the dean to be fired.
Dean Berg countered with a clip of me on the deck of some mountain cabin, cradling a cup of cocoa and conversing calmly with him. He accused my parents of medical neglect, saying that I had manifested psychiatric symptoms before attending Forge. He claimed that my parents had exacerbated my mental illness with poor nutrition, lack of oversight, and a violent, unstable home life. He said they concealed my troubled school record and heedlessly, knowingly pushed me into the spotlight when they knew the pressure could harm me. He insinuated that my sister, Dubbs, would be better off in foster care.
My parents sued him for libel.
“What Rosie needs most at this time is privacy,” Berg said, when cornered by a reporter. “Putting her on a show with a million cameras was arguably the worst thing we could have done to this fragile, brilliant girl. I deeply regret we didn’t realize sooner how harmful it was for her, but she’s now getting the care she needs. I’m sure you’ll all be hearing from her soon. She appreciates your concern. The board is reviewing its health screening process for future students.”
I bet it was.
I examined the footage of me on the cabin deck, trying to see how it could have been faked. Berg did, after all, know a thing or two about cameras and CGI, but he also knew that experts could tell when something was rigged. Everything in the clip looked authentic: the lighting, the shadows, even the moving shadow of a plane that passed over the pines in the background. The girl in the clip was dressed in a parka and sunglasses. She didn’t move much, but she was unmistakably me, down to the gap in my teeth.
It was a good sign, and I was relieved. At least the original me was alive somewhere, or had been as of the date of this video. Best case scenario, he’d actually moved me to some psychiatric facility like he said. I would hate that, but at least I could be conscious and reason with people there. On the other hand, Berg might still have my body locked up in some vault. He could have hauled me out for show while he filmed that clip and dumped me right back to sleep afterward.
I wouldn’t put it past Mr. Evil Incarnate.
What had he done to Linus? I tilted the phone nearer, held my breath, and typed in a search for Linus Pitts.
Top 10 Hottest Guys on Forge
The Bare Facts: Linus Pitts Uncensored
Did Linus Kill Rosie?
Found Missing Taps Linus Pitts as New Host
Forge Dishwasher Reunites with Aunt